to subject this nascent spirit to any extensive and Procrustean system of conditions, restrictions, and subordinance to some general theory, we are convinced either that what would have been called the absurd apprehensions and despotic meddling of the Government would have been derided and defeated, OR that the springtide of enterprise would have been checked and turned at the outset, and that the magnificent conceptions of Stephenson might have been doomed for another half century to slumber with the embryos of earlier days-the railroads of Anderson and the locomotives of Symington. We are satisfied, therefore, that our Government and our legislature acted-we can hardly say wisely-for we think they had no choice, but-fortunately for the great result, in not attempting either to stimulate by public aid, or to limit by restrictive enactments, the spontaneous developments of the wants and wishes of all the various interests which were successively brought into action. The result has been that the free energies and unfettered wealth of the country have done what we are confident no other means could have accomplished, and have produced and gone far towards perfecting the most magnificent, and, in spite of minor errors and defects, the most useful and successful series of public works that the mind of man had ever conceived, or the hands of man ever performed. From the latest returns it ap pears that within the year 1843 70 railroads, constructed at an outlay of 60,000,000. at the average cost of about 1åd. a mile, and with but one fatal passenger-accident. of con We now hear great deal about the superior economy struction and management of the continental railroads-where the Governments exercise a great present control, and have a reversionary right of absolute possession-and particularly of those of Belgium, which are altogether the work and property of the Government. Under such a system, it is contended, a much more convenient and profitable arrangement might have been made here at a considerably less expense. It seems, however, to us that the practice of the foreign railroads is, in this point, of no authority whatsoever. They had not, as we had, to grope their way in the dark. They were not thought of till our English experiment had proved all the theorems, and solved all the problems, and left them nothing to do but to apply confidently, economically, and profitably the cheap lessons of our dear-bought experience. A preconcerted system was as natural and neces sar sary for them as it was impossible to us. But there were other reasons, if any were needed, which practically required the direct interference of the continental Governments. They already monopolised the means of travelling: the care of the highways, and the supply of post-horses, were a department of State, and so must naturally be their substitute-the railroad. And, lastly, which perhaps we might as well have put first, they had no capitalists who would, or could undertake such enterprises. France, benefiting, as Belgium did, by our experience, endeavours to subject individual lines to a general system, and though she has hitherto found it expedient to permit private enterprise to originate these works, the Government subscribes largely to the capital-guarantees the interest-reserves a great immediate control, and stipulates for the reversion of the absolute property after a certain number of years; and this, upon the whole, we think the plan best suited to the present state of France, though it never would have been thought of as a rule for our first experiments. But notwithstanding the benefit derived from our experience, and in spite of the controlling authority of the Governments, mistakes have been made both in Belgium and in France as considerable pro ratâ as those that are objected to us. We do not believe that so great a blunder has been any where made in England as in some local lines in France, and particularly the double railway on the right and left banks of the Seine, from Paris to Versailles. But even with government aid the Rouen and Orleans lines could not have been executed, but for the assistance of English capital and English hands. And, even while we write, we learn that the whole French system has been deranged; so that the company which had undertaken the great northern line to Calais and Lisle on the government conditions, have thrown up the enterprise, and the government will be obliged to undertake the work altogether on its own resources. Thus, then, though we admit that if it had been possible to foresee all that has occurred, a general plan of engineering operations might have saved a good deal of money, and might perhaps have been in some instances more convenient, yet we think it has so happened that the general result is nearly as good as any à priori system could have produced. When the Romans extended their civilizing conquests into Britain, they began, and in the course of their occupation perfected, those great lines of road still distinguished by their name* * It might be inferred that the aboriginal Britons must have had roads, and good roads too, as they had chariots; but when we also read that these chariots were driven to and fro at full speed on any accidental field of battle, where of course art could not have removed the natural inequalities of the ground, we know not what to think of it, and are disposed to doubt whether such chariots as could career over the wilds and the woodlands of Caledonia or Anderida, needed good roads. -which have been ever since the main arteries of internal intercourse and the bases of all later viafication; and so ably were they laid out that it is in a high degree interesting to observe to how great an extent they anticipated the lines which modern science has adopted for its railways. It is true that the levels of the Roman and the Rail roads were chosen on different principles of engineering: the Roman roads looked out for fords, and were not deterred by elevated ridges; whereas the railroad seeks for levels, and therefore prefers running up valleys; but they both contemplated such a general intersection of the country as would produce the most convenient and frequented communication. The following diagram exhibits a general view of the direction of the principal Roman roads in England. The reader will at once perceive that most of these ancient roads pass through the same regions and in the same general directions as the principal lines of railway. The The South Eastern, the London and Birmingham, the Grand Junction, and the Chester and Crewe, replace the great Watling Street from Dover to Chester. The Gloucester and Birmingham, the Derby Junction, and the North Midland deviate little from a Roman road which Dr. Stukeley calls the Ricning Street.* The Bristol and Gloucester, when it shall be finished, and the Bath and Exeter, which replaces the southern branch of the Foss Way, will complete the old Roman communication between York and Exeter. The Great Western (with a deviation to the northward between Reading and Chippenham) supplies the place of the Roman iter from London to Bath and Bristol. The South Western is exactly described by Horsley's account of the road by which Vespasian marched to the conquest of the Isle of Wight. We have here,' he says, 'a military way passing from London to Winchester, and one branch of it to the [shore opposite the] Isle of Wight.'-Brit. Rom., p. 32. The Brighton and the Northern and Eastern would, as originally designed, run through the whole country traversed by the Ermine Street; and the Eastern Counties follows a Roman way which Horsley designates as the Icknield Street. The Liverpool and Manchester, Manchester and Leeds, and Leeds and York, replace the Northern Watling Street. The railways from York to Newcastle on the east, and from Manchester to Lancaster on the west, are nearly coincident with the eastern and western Roman ways into Scotland. The Carlisle and Newcastle railroad connects the Solway Firth and the mouth of the Tyne just as the wall and military way of Severus did; even the little branch to Maryport is found in the Itinera; and still further north the Edinburgh and Glasgow line runs through the district of the Antonine wall and road. There were also Roman roads through North Wales to Bangor and Caernarvon, and through South Wales to Milford Haven; but they are not so distinctly traceable as the others. The Taff There is great doubt and difficulty in reconciling some of those old British names with the Roman Itinera. The Watling Street, from Dover to Chester-the Foss Way from Exeter to Lincoln and the North sea-and the Ermine Street, from Newhaven near Brighton to the Humber-there is no doubt about; there was also a Roman road, called the Julian Way, which appears to have run from the Bristol Channel somewhere near Usk or Cardiff, towards Shrewsbury, and Chester; but the Ricning Street, the Icknield Street, the Akeman Street, &c., are very confused, and the best writers contradict not only each other but even themselves in attempting to distinguish them. We suspect that the difficulty arises from these names having been generic, and not local; for we read (Higden's Polychronicon, and elsewhere) of a North Watling Street, far beyond the great Chester road; and in the south of several Icknield Streets, which cannot, by any possibility, be brought into one; and the Akeman appears in unconnected places. But, however uncertain the nomenclature may be, there is no doubt at all of the existence and direction of the Roman roads as stated in the text. Vale line runs for thirty miles in one of the supposed directions of the Julian Way from the neighbourhood of Cardiff northward, So that it appears that about three-fourths of the Julian Way, and some of the middle and north-eastern parts of the Foss Way, are the only portions of the great system of Roman viafication which are not represented in the combination of existing or projected railroads. We do not suppose that the projectors of the various railways thought or, at least, cared about the old Roman roads; but those lines of communication having been originally selected by a wise and provident people, and the population having continued to condense itself along the sides of those channels of intercourse, the modern engineers naturally fell into the same general line of operation; and when we thus find the policy and prudence of the Romans, the experience of succeeding ages, and the shrewd vigilance of local and private interests, all coinciding in the choice of these principal lines, we venture to doubt whether any Commission of Government or any Committee of the House of Commons would have devised anything more practically useful; and we therefore arrive at the satisfactory conclusion that-as regards the general conveniencethere is not much to regret in what, under a fortunate concurrence of circumstances, has been adopted. The great burst, however, of railroad speculation in 1836 awakened some degree of legislative attention; and the committees on bills, both in the lords and the commons, began to feel the necessity of enacting clauses protective of the public safety and interests. Early in that session, on the motion of Mr. Poulett Thomson, then President of the Board of Trade, a select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into the standing orders of the House as to railroad bills, and the conditions which it may be advisable to recommend for introduction into such bills with a view to a future session of parliament.' The report was not made till August, and, considering how many railroad bills passed that session, it is to be regretted that a general saving clause, similar to one recommended in a Report of 1839, for the future intervention of the legislature, was not then adopted. That Committee indeed does not seem to have thought of entering into such general considerations, but confined itself to the preliminary and very insufficient checks to be afforded by the future improvement of the standing orders. So that the twenty-nine bills of 1836, and those of 1837, 1838, and 1839, were laboriously battled by promoters and opposers through the committees of both Houses of Parliament, without any superintendence of the Government, and in a spirit of litiga |